Burlesque Star Ginger Maraschino on Self-Love, Joy, and the Radical Power of Play

I’m meeting burlesque star Ginger Maraschino — aka Steph G — for coffee at Camp Kingston, and I can’t imagine a better person to talk to about self-love, pleasure, and joy for our Love Frequency month. When she walks in, there’s no mistaking her presence: vibrant red hair, a red lip, and a warmth that seems to arrive a half-beat before she does. She’s a hugger — the good kind — all open energy and easy laughter, the sort of woman who makes you feel instantly welcome in her orbit.

Some people sparkle for attention. Ginger sparkles because she’s genuinely alive inside her own life.

She didn’t arrive at burlesque chasing a spotlight. Like so many of us in 2020, she arrived searching for a way back into her body — for movement, sensation, something that felt awake inside a stalled world. She began taking pole classes at Hudson Valley Pole in Kingston, a studio she still speaks about with reverence.

“Without Hudson Valley Pole, there wouldn’t be a Ginger Maraschino,” she tells me. “I wouldn’t have found my confidence or my willingness to be perceived in my community. I met my best friend there. I owe that place everything.”

She’d always loved theater and performance, but sensuality had lived in carefully contained, private spaces.

“I was always secretly, intimately sensual,” she says. “Society made me feel like I had to be very demure about my sexuality and fluidity — except behind closed doors.”

Pole didn’t transform Ginger overnight. It gently reshaped how she inhabited her body — trusting its strength first, letting confidence follow.

“There was this duality of loving my body for what it was capable of, not just what it looked like,” she explains. “Pole is demanding. You have to keep at it. It’s muscular and strong. But it’s also built from sex work — so the celebratory nature of the community really changed how I saw myself.”

 “Pole taught me to love my body for what it could do, not just what it looked like.” — Ginger Maraschino

It was there that she met her best friend and future collaborator, Kate Beyond — a commanding presence Ginger affectionately describes as being “from what I like to call Pennsylvania New Jersey.” Kate’s family is rooted near the Poconos, a geography that would quietly shape the next chapter of both their lives.

“I actually lived in the Poconos for a year when I was really young, with my grandmother,” Ginger says. “So there was already this weird emotional familiarity there.”

During the pandemic, a renowned New York City performer, Calamity Chang — celebrated at international burlesque festivals — relocated to the Poconos and began producing intimate seasonal shows at a local bar. The effect felt deliciously improbable: big-stage energy in a small-town room, glamour drifting in like a secret.

Kate, long fascinated by burlesque but never close enough to touch its orbit, began attending the shows. Eventually, she reached out to Calamity simply to say thank you.

Calamity’s response was classic burlesque generosity.

“She was basically like, ‘Okay — but do you want to do it then?’” Ginger laughs. “That’s actually really common in burlesque. Someone will say, ‘Oh, you like this? Do you want to do it too?’ When you see someone doing something brave, suddenly it feels possible.”

“When you see someone doing something brave, suddenly it feels possible.” — Ginger Maraschino

By October 2022, Kate gathered the courage to debut.

“Everyone from the pole studio made a whole trip out of it,” Ginger remembers. “Hotels, carpools — the whole thing. We were so excited.”

During Kate’s debut show, the scheduled stage kitten — burlesque shorthand for stage hand — unexpectedly couldn’t perform their duties. The host asked the audience if anyone could step in.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ll do it. It’s my best friend’s show. There needs to be a stage kitten.’”

Backstage, Ginger met Calamity. The instinct to make room — to extend the spotlight — stirred again.

“She said, ‘You’re cute, you’re good at this — do you want to do it too?’”

Ginger began stage-kittening regularly, absorbing burlesque from the inside out — pacing, etiquette, the choreography of trust, the quiet rituals of respect that hold vulnerable spaces together. Performing herself hadn’t crossed her mind yet. But she was already a singer.

“Initially, I asked if I could just sing in the shows,” she says. “And Calamity was like, ‘Of course.”

The first time Ginger removed clothing onstage is still etched into her nervous system.

“There’s the rush of performing, but there’s also the sensory part,” she says. “You work up a sweat under the lights, then you feel the shift of cold air on your skin when you strip. It’s electrifying.”

“You work up a sweat under the lights, then you feel the shift of cold air on your skin when you strip. It’s electrifying.” — Ginger Maraschino

It was exhilarating — and quietly terrifying. The kind of exposure that isn’t just visual, but existential.

“You can’t really see the audience,” she says. “You’re literally saying, ‘Here I am.’”

That moment of offering — visibility without armor — is why safety mattered so deeply as she crossed that threshold.

“If I was going to do nudity, I needed to know the audience was mostly queer, the stage was elevated, the lighting was good, there was distance,” she says. “I didn’t want to think about being perceived by straight men.”

What she was really protecting wasn’t modesty, but agency: the freedom to feel powerful rather than watched, expressive rather than extracted. The conditions weren’t about control — they were about creating a room where pleasure could remain intelligent, mutual, and chosen.

From there, momentum built organically. Ginger and Kate began appearing across the region — Connecticut, New Jersey, Albany, Woodstock — a small but mighty ecosystem of burlesque thriving outside major metros. For about a year and a half, they toured together, learning what makes a room feel safe, what makes it electric, what makes it true.

Then Ginger felt the pull to build something of her own.

“I’m from Kingston. I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve watched it rise and fall and change,” she says. “I wanted to bring this thing that I loved home.”

 “I’m from Kingston. I’ve lived here my whole life — watched it rise, fall, and change. I wanted to bring this thing that I loved home.”— Ginger Maraschino

Her loyalty to Kingston runs deep — not just as hometown, but as a creative ecosystem. When she talks about Darlings, Keegan Ales, Salt Box, and Camp Kingston, her whole face changes, as if she’s naming old friends rather than venues. These are places built on reciprocity rather than extraction — rooms where creativity gets to breathe and move instead of being consumed, where artists aren’t treated like background texture but like real collaborators with agency and appetite. It’s the kind of environment Ginger feels at home in — and the kind she’s now helping to grow around her.

In spring 2024, she began producing her own shows in Kingston, starting at Unicorn Bar and expanding to Night Swim and Darlings — now beloved creative home bases for her growing community.

“Darlings in Tillson is our absolute favorite place to do a show,” she says. “Maddie is so good to us. The audience is always so receptive.”

By day, Ginger works in a law office — a contrast she clearly delights in, as if the universe handed her a perfectly camp double life.

“My boss knows what I do. She comes to shows. She’s supportive. I know how lucky that is.”

She kept returning to one guiding question: how to recreate the feeling of her own first burlesque experience for every audience member who walked through the door.

“I wanted people, if this was their first time seeing it, to get what I got the first time.”

That instinct — equal parts generosity and rigor — quietly shaped everything that followed. In just two years, what began as a handful of shows has grown into a vibrant, ever-expanding burlesque ecosystem in Kingston and beyond, with venues now calling her rather than the other way around: Hudson House Distillery, Keegan Ales, Assembly.

Inside the Burleque community, Ginger and her circle affectionately call themselves “burly girls.” There are even a few male performers who wear pasties in gleeful solidarity — a small, joyful rebellion stitched right into the costume rack.

“It’s very celebratory,” she says. “Everybody is supportive. It’s like a sorority — minus the drama.”

What binds them isn’t just performance, but a shared unlearning of shame — around bodies, desire, visibility, pleasure, power. It’s sensual without being predatory, glamorous without being exclusionary, sexy without shrinking itself into a single narrow fantasy. A reminder that being seen doesn’t have to mean being reduced.

“Go to a burlesque show if you’re feeling self-conscious about your cellulite or stretch marks or your butt or your boobs,” Ginger says. “Go watch someone with a body just like yours be absolutely adored. The audience is losing their mind. Dollar bills flying. It recalibrates you.”

 “Go watch someone with a body just like yours be absolutely adored. It recalibrates you.” — Ginger Maraschino

Her philosophy is refreshingly blunt — and deeply affectionate toward the body she actually has.

“I’ll die on this hill,” she laughs. “I’d rather love the way I look naked than the way I look in clothes. Truly. My body wouldn’t lend itself well to extreme weight loss — I’d look like I was melting.”

 “I’d rather love the way I look naked than the way I look in clothes.” — Ginger Maraschino

It’s less manifesto than lived reality: a woman genuinely at ease with her curves, curious about where the rest of us learned to be so suspicious of our own skin.

“A lot of it has to do with where you grow up,” she says. “In wealthier communities, thinness is really celebrated. I feel fortunate I’ve never been in a community where curviness wasn’t celebrated.”

On a burlesque stage, that generosity of perspective becomes unmistakable.

“There are tiny boobs, big boobs, small waists, thick waists,” she says. “And the audience is losing their minds for all of it.”

Finding Her Act

At first, Ginger admits, she tried on a version of burlesque that simply wasn’t hers.

“I felt like an imposter trying to do high seduction,” she says. “Relying on the music to tell the story with my movement alone was never really accessible for me.”

She was surrounded by extraordinary performers — friends who could smolder on command, who embodied the classic sex-kitten archetype with feline ease. Watching them was thrilling. Trying to inhabit that energy herself felt like wearing someone else’s costume: beautiful, but not cut for her.

It wasn’t insecurity so much as misalignment.

“I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t need to perform anyone else’s version of sexy,” she says. “I didn’t need to be sultry or mysterious. I could be silly. I could be joyful.”

 “I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t need to perform anyone else’s version of sexy. I didn’t need to be sultry or mysterious. I could be silly. I could be joyful.” — Ginger Maraschino

The breakthrough came when she stopped chasing seduction and started chasing delight. Instead of the slow-burn tease, she leaned into what actually lit her up — playfulness, humor, theatrical spontaneity, the joy of being visibly amused by herself.

“I could just be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m over here. Oh no — that piece of clothing just came off,” she laughs. “That’s where I found my stride.”

The accidental reveal became its own kind of seduction — an oopsie rather than a prowling promise. Not control, but charm. And far more relatable — because most of us know the feeling: wanting to be seductive, then immediately losing the plot over what to do with our face.

Singing became the natural extension of that discovery — not just a talent, but a storytelling engine.

“A singing strip made the most sense for me,” she explains. “Because then I can actually tell the story — physically and verbally — instead of trying to communicate everything only through movement.”

Her acts became theatrical and funny, often sung live — headset mic taped neatly to her cheek, the pack hidden in her wig.

“I went full Devo,” she laughs.

Musically, she moves effortlessly between worlds. She sings Beyoncé. She sings burlesque standards like “Big Spender” and “Why Don’t You Do Right” by Peggy Lee. She cut “Fever” after deciding its lyrics no longer aligned with her values.

And then there are the crowd favorites — the ones she returns to not out of habit, but pleasure.

“The two songs I sing the most are “All That Jazz “— and I bring it up a key in the second half — and “Pink Pony Club”. Those are the ones everybody loves.”

Because she sings live with a hands-free mic, her body stays fully available to the room — flirting with the crowd, stretching notes, letting costume pieces tumble away at exactly the right beat. It’s less seduction as distance and more seduction as invitation: open, playful, generously human. The audience isn’t being dazzled from afar; they’re being welcomed into the moment — into the joke, into the pleasure of watching someone visibly enjoy herself.

That generosity, she believes, is part of burlesque’s deeper DNA.

“Burlesque has always carried a political pulse,” Ginger says. “There’s rebellion stitched right into the sequins.”

 “Burlesque has always carried a political pulse. There’s rebellion stitched right into the sequins.” — Ginger Maraschino

Not rebellion for shock value, but the quieter kind that lives in choice: who gets to be seen, how bodies get celebrated, how pleasure gets defined on one’s own terms. For Ginger, power lives precisely there — in agency, in authorship, in deciding what gets revealed and when.

“You’re still taking your clothes off for money — but only as many as you want.”

As a producer, she’s fiercely protective of safety and equity.

“No one has ever been made to feel unsafe in a show I’ve produced. You’re not allowed to touch anyone without explicit permission — and if you do, you leave.”

She holds firm on pay standards, too.

“The venue benefits more from you being there. If we all hold the line, nobody gets taken advantage of.”

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Lingerie, Direction, and the Art of Feeling Like Yourself

Offstage, Ginger is unabashedly romantic in the softest way — bubble baths, candlelight, lingerie worn purely for herself. She and many of her fellow performers shop at Red Foxxx in Woodstock, a beloved local haunt that feels more like a private dressing room shared among friends: racks of color, stretch, sparkle, texture, personality. Tucked into Woodstock, this gorgeous high-end lingerie shop treats lingerie as an atmosphere — a costume, a mood, a private little theater — pieces that linger on the body and in the imagination. 

It mirrors Ginger’s philosophy exactly: put on what makes you feel powerful, mischievous, and at home in your own skin — whether anyone else ever sees it or not. This isn’t about becoming “better.” It’s about becoming more yours. And that’s how she thinks about confidence, too — less self-improvement project, more styling trick for the soul: you’re not correcting your body, you’re composing the picture.

“Every part of you, you get to pick exactly how it’s going to look — where the eyes are going. You literally get to decide what they see. So use that.”

Her advice is refreshingly practical — less about fixing anything, more about setting yourself up to actually enjoy your body. If a hip dip nags at you, try caged bottoms. A little back roll calls for a long-line bra. Arms can be softened with puffs, fringe, bands, or even opera-length gloves. Garters and fishnets turn attention into celebration. She applies the same thinking to her own costumes, balancing fullness on top with ruffles and volume below.

“It’s not about hiding,” she says. “It’s about directing.”

 “It’s not about hiding. It’s about directing.” — Ginger Maraschino

The deeper point is freedom — the kind that arrives when your brain stops micromanaging your body and lets you actually inhabit it. Confidence, Ginger insists, is incremental: you chip away at it, you feel better little by little. Some days, the prescription is even simpler — stand naked in front of the mirror for five minutes and find one thing you like. After all, she’d rather love the way she looks naked than the way she looks in clothes.

And you don’t have to become a burlesque performer to steal the lesson. Borrow the posture, the self-trust, the tiny theater of it. Put on the lingerie because YOU like it. Try the red lip because it makes you feel like someone who gets her own jokes. Practice the silly little “oops” reveal at home, for no one. Let your body be a place you live, not a project you manage.

Who among us hasn’t wanted to do a little seductive dance — and then immediately talked ourselves out of it? Ginger’s gift is the permission slip we didn’t know we needed: not to become someone else’s fantasy, but to become more fully ourselves — playful, powerful, imperfect, gloriously seen.

“Ginger’s gift is the permission slip we didn’t know we needed — not to become someone else’s fantasy, but to become more fully ourselves: playful, powerful, imperfect, gloriously seen.”

Her husband often runs sound at her shows. “He sees the star quality in me more than I do,” she laughs — a reminder that sometimes confidence doesn’t arrive from the mirror at all, but from briefly borrowing the eyes of the people who love us best.

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Silk, Lace + Self-Confidence

A small edit of Ginger-inspired favorites from The Red Foxxx — curated around her philosophy of directing attention, celebrating texture, and dressing for joy first. Less about fixing. All about feeling delicious.

Flirty Ruffles | Lola Romper

Ruffles Where You Want the Party. Because volume is a mood — and sometimes a little swish does half the flirting for you. Ginger loves ruffles for creating shape, movement, and playful drama exactly where you want the eye to linger.

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Garters | Frisson Leg Garters

Leg Jewelry for Your Main Character Era. Garters aren’t about hiding anything — they’re about underlining the good parts. A little architecture for the legs, a little attitude for the mirror. Instant confidence upgrade, even under sweatpants.

A Little Cage Action | The Modern Garter

Strategic Peekaboo, Expertly Deployed. Caged details let you guide the gaze rather than fight it. Think of it as styling your silhouette with intention — not disguise, just delicious direction.

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Fishnets | Fine Fishnet Tights

Texture Changes Everything. Fishnets turn legs into punctuation marks. A little graphic, a little mischievous, endlessly flattering — and proof that sometimes confidence is simply adding a layer of intrigue.

The Power Suit | Echo Bodysuit

Soft Armor for Bold Moods. Structured but sensual, this is Ginger energy in garment form: confident, playful, and unapologetically present. The kind of piece that makes posture improve automatically.

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A Silky Robe | VIP Confession Robe

Drama for Your Morning Coffee. Because glamour doesn’t need an audience. Slip this on while answering emails, watering plants, or doing absolutely nothing important — and watch your mood rise accordingly.

A Long-Line Bustier Bra | Femmoiselle Bustier

Support, But Make It Romantic. Long-line silhouettes smooth, sculpt, and subtly empower. The quiet confidence piece that lets you stop thinking about your body — and start enjoying being in it. A long lie bustier bra.

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Catch Ginger in Action

Assembly | Kingston, NY | May 23, 2026
Ginger returns to Assembly with the Hudson Valley Burlesque Bash — a celebratory evening honoring both the art of tease and the rich creative lineage behind burlesque itself. Last year marked Assembly’s very first burlesque show — and Ginger’s largest audience yet — a night that felt less like a performance and more like a joyful civic gathering in sequins.

The Colony |Woodstock, NY | February 14, 2025 | Valentine’s Weekend
Ginger appears in a production by Tryst Noir, bringing high glamour and theatrical mischief to a romantic winter stage.

Keegan Ales | Kingston, NY
February 15, 2025
Burlesque Bingo Brunch — a treasured crowd favorite powered by laughter, flirtation, and the kind of community chemistry that only happens when great beer meets brave performance. Ginger is especially grateful to Lisa and the Keegan team for their continued support of the burlesque and pole community as it grows across the Valley.

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Follow/Connect with Ginger Maraschino @gingermaraschino — consider it your standing invitation into the sparkle.

Photos Courtesy of Ginger Maraschino. Photographers include: Stephanie May – La Photographie Boudoir, Oli Thomas and Penny Royal

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